This special issue of Ang Bayan is being published in response to the widespread clamor from Party members and revolutionary forces for a more comprehensive discussion on the attacks and campaign of slander being perpetrated by Akbayan and Walden Bello, side-by-side with vilifications by the Trotskyites, since December 2004.

It will be recalled that, in its December 7, 2004 issue, Ang Bayan published a diagram prepared by the CPP International Department listing the international Trotskyite and social-democratic links of counterrevolutionary groups. The diagram sought to tear away their “revolutionary” masks and expose the real character of Trotskyites as intriguers and pseudo-revolutionaries out to wreck the revolution in the guise of their anarchy and of Akbayan as apologists and collaborators of the ruling reactionary system and bureaucratic-military establishment in the guise of their psuedo-reformism.

A few weeks later, Akbayan and its chairman emeritus Walden Bello came out in the media, simultaneously with a Trotskyite dilettante, all lashing at the CPP for publishing the diagram. They misrepresented the diagram as a “hit list” to demonize the CPP and National Democratic Front (NDF) senior political consultant Jose Ma. Sison, who they maliciously claimed to be the author of the diagram.

Subsequently, Bello, Akbayan and the Troskyites extended their campaign to international anti-globalization organizations and fora, maligning the CPP and the Philippine revolutionary movement in the vain hope of ranging these forces against the CPP. Bello and his like also engaged in Red-baiting, echoing the oft-repeated military propaganda line of labeling aboveground, legal organizations as “controlled” by or “associated” with the Communist Party.

The attacks by Bello, Akbayan and the Trostkyites have been vigorously countered by the Party and the NDF through a series of statements and articles published in newspapers and posted on different websites. Ang Bayan has likewise featured several articles since December, exposing Akbayan as a bastion of pseudo-reformism that has intently and maliciously served as the fascist military’s political instrument in the latter’s war against the revolutionary armed movement.

In countering Bello, Akbayan and the Trostskyite’s attacks against the CPP and the revolutionary movement, the revolutionary forces have transformed a bad thing into a good thing. The revolutionary forces maximized the opportunity to thoroughly expose what those pretenders really stand for.

In the end, by carrying out their vile attacks against the CPP, Bello and Akbayan and the Trotskyites have exposed themselves and were further stripped down to their core as conscious defenders of the ruling system.

Events in the past months have bared this more clearly: as the reactionary state launched a vicious fascist campaign against the national democratic mass organizations and other progressive forces˜the very same organizations that Akbayan redbaited˜these pretenders to revolution and reform had kept silent. In the end, they issued a rather comical statement calling on the Arroyo regime˜ the perpetrator no less, of the recent acts of state terrorism˜“to protect its citizens.”

Akbayan in particular has also supported the Arroyo regime in its effort to compel the NDF to capitulate to the reactionary state through the peace negotiations. For a long time, Akbayan had been sitting at the government side of the negotiating table.

Akbayan’s very acts have exposed it as an adjunct of the ruling reactionary state. Yet, it insists on calling itself a “progressive” force˜“Left,” even˜to counterpose itself against the CPP and the revolutionary armed movement; and lead the people away from the path of revolutionary armed struggle and into the path of pseudoreformism and tokenism.

In attacking the Communist Party of the Philippines and the revolutionary armed struggle, Bello and Akbayan are waging a political and ideological battle to counter Marxism-Leninism, cover up the fundamental class contradictions in Philippine society and conceal the class nature of the reactionary state and ruling system. They systematically work to lead the people away from militant struggle, put forward proposals to “improve’’ the system, deflect the demand of the working class to put an end to capitalism, and drown the clamor for people’s new democracy and socialism in the hope of putting themselves forward as the Filipino people’s”new alternative" to the prevailing oppressive and exploitative social and political system.

This special issue, which features a selection of documents and statements issued by the NDF and the CPP, seeks to provide revolutionary forces with a ready reference to grasp fully the pseudoreformist politics of Bello and Akbayan and the revolution-wrecking views of the Trostkyites and how these are being used against the revolutionary movement. Pseudo-revolutionism and pseudoreformism, especially when camouflaged with pseudo-progressive and “revolutionary” rhetoric, remain potently counterrevolutionary. These must be completely unmasked and repudiated for the revolution to move forward.

Content of the 10 August 2005 English Edition of Ang Bayan

“Concerning the campaign of slander against the CPP and the revolutionary movement by Walden Bello, Akbayan and the Trotskyites”

– Rejoinder to slander article of French Trotskyite Pierre Rousset.
– Clarificatory statement: On the political diagram appearing in the Ang Bayan issue of December 7, 2004.
– Comrade Luis Jalandoni’s letter to the Central Committee regarding the political diagram.
– Response of the Central Committee to Comrade Luis Jalandoni’s letter.
– Character assassination and cheap shots by rabid anti-communists and pseudo-revolutionaries.
– Complaints should be submitted to the NDFP-JMC and not to the NDFP Chief Political Consultant.
– Walden Bello exposes himself as a pro-US pseudo-progressive.
– CPP, NPA and NDFP uphold human rights.
– Reyes is criminally culpable for Kampanyang Ahos.
– Fear your AFP psywar handlers, CPP cautions Akbayan officials.